I LOVE Kresley Cole's Immortals After Dark series. I am astonished that she has managed to keep the quality level so high book after book. Every time a new book is due out I reread the whole series just in anticipation. So when I read she was starting a young adult series I was bummed because that could only mean delays in the next IAD entry. Now I discover her next adult title is a sort of spin-off of IAD and not part of the main story arc. This actually pisses me off. Can't we finish the first series before she starts others? It's now been almost a year since LOTHAIRE was released and I have no idea when we'll have the next IAD story. There are still so many characters hanging. Poor Fury is at the bottom of the ocean somewhere, drowning over and over, for cripes' sake!

I know authors must get tired of a long series, but shouldn't they complete one series before starting another one, let alone two?_________________Justin managed to look superior and bored and disbelieving all at once. No mean feat for a man who'd just fallen from a tree.

That said, I am going to buy the IAD-spinoff book in the meantime. Debating the YA series. I'm sure it will be good, but I heard it ends on a kind of cliff-hanger in that the next book features the same couple ... and I hate that. I like knowing my couples get their HEA in one book and the next book in the series features a different couple.

I just wish authors I like would stop writing YA books, especially series ones, because I don't particularly want to read them, and definitely not if they have cliff hangers. (And I don't like post-apocalyptic stories, either. *sigh*)

I'm fine with the spinoff series, though, and actually quite looking forward to it. It may not be moving the main storyline forward, but it's still in the same world.

(By the way... The next IAD book is MacRieve, about Uilleam, and is to be released in May of next year. I really have to wonder at the title, though, since there are already three MacRieve books and most likely another for Munro. The previous titles may be pretty indistinguishable, but MacRieve just seems silly.)

I am not wild about her YA, I (cynically) think that she's headed off in that direction because it's a hot market. Next, a 50 Shades of Gray paranormal? But perhaps I'm just bitter because I'm so invested in her IAD series.

I'm not unhappy about her spin-off into the Dacians because I view it as another IAD installment. Great news about Uilleam's book, though! I love the MacRieves!

I'm in complete agreement. Cole is an auto-buy for me, so I will buy the book that is the spin-off of "IAD" but it really annoys me that it's not an IAD book. I really do wish authors would just commit to an end game. She's a great author and IAD is huge... if she went to her publisher and said that she was wrapping it up in 3 books, they wouldn't stop her. Why not just select 3 final characters and get it done? Then go on and write 10 more series that have nothing to do with IAD. No biggie. It makes me so happy that JK Rowling committed to the 7 books and then moved on. It would have sucked if she decided to take a break at Book Five just for kicks.

I did not read "Poison Princess" and probably won't. I really liked "Hunger Games" and enjoyed a YA book that came out recently ("Cinder") and am a huge "Harry Potter" fan... but I don't like most of the YA books out there. What I've read of this one makes it seem like it's got some of my pet peeves in it (weak heroine; dark storyline with little to no comic relief; first person so not a lot of fleshing out of other characters).

Like Jane A, my first (cynical) thoughts also were, "Oh, she's doing this so she can get huge and get a movie deal." Later on, though, I thought about it and I can't say I blame her for wanting to write stuff that may get her talent more recognition. The fact is that the IAD books will never be taken as seriously as a YA book will and there is no shot of "mainstream" success. Not at the level of "Twilight" or anything. It's a shame, really. IAD has a rich mythos and is extremely creative. I could easily see it being a great HBO series (along the lines of "True Blood") but because it's regular 'ole romance novels, no one will ever consider it worthy.

I too am a die-hard KC fan but to help our favorite authors sustain quality in their work, I think it is important that they investigate new genres and expand on what they write. If not they stand the chance of losing the high quality we fans expect.

I personally am not upset over the diversion because she is normally slow to get her books out anyway so it's not like she's the parnormal version of Barbara Cartland who I am told would churn books out like once a month.

As for her YA. PLEASE read it. It was excellent and with the Ascension coming up I can only see the Daican spin off as a plus. Why you ask? (well you may not be askin' but I'm a tellin') The IAD was running the risk of being a bite cannibalistic in that all of the characters have basically be introduced (with the exception of some key one's Nucking Futs Nix, etc) but we were now seeing so much overlap in the newer stories that fans could run the risk of who/what fatigue...

I think it's ok to feel a little bummed out that one of your favorite authors is doing something different (Kristen Ashley just got picked up by Hatchet so I'm bummed that I have to pay more for her books and I'm worried they won't be as good). At the same time I think it's important to realize that this is how they (hopefully) make their living so sometimes they are going to have to make business based decisions. Ilona Andrews once had a great post about why they started a second series before finishing Kate Daniels and the gist of it was that they can't put all their eggs in that one basket and they have to prepare for the end of one series by starting another. And the point utoeid made that a new series is how they keep the creative juices flowing is totally valid.
All that being said I have to disagree with utoeid's feelings about Poison Princess. I didn't really enjoy it. The first third of the book was pretty boring and slow moving, the heroine wasn't particularly likeable (until the end but I don't want to spoil anything). Additionally the hero was a total ass who treated her like crap and treated the autistic boy terrible as well. Lastly it was a cliff hanger...booo I hate cliff hangers.
All that being said I liked what she was doing with tarot cards the idea behind the book is great (if that even makes sense). I won't read the next one but maybe when all the books come out I'll reevaluate but I'm not exactly on pins and needles.

While I agree with the business side of things (I can't fault Cole for wanting to branch out to more lucrative waters), I can't buy into the whole "creative juices" side of things. If an author has series burn-out, I blame the author and their tendency to not plan ahead and bite off more than they can chew.

Cole started writing extra stories for the IAD series and focused on characters that extended out the life and duration of this series. And that was her own decision. Nothing is stopping her from finishing the final three (Lanthe, Nix, and Kristoff/Furie). She chose to write Lothaire's book and also to branch into this Dacian series. Now, I read somewhere that the next IAD book is going to be called MacReive. It's not one of the final three that Cole has set up the series for... it's - again - a filler book. Cole is choosing to prolong the ending of the series; if she really needs to move on and get her creative juices flowing outside of IAD then she should wrap up IAD and move on. She shouldn't just keep pushing off the ending.

Showalter did the same thing with the Lords of the Underworld series. She brought in all these other characters and focused so much page time on them that she keeps promising all these books and stories that will make the series into a never-ending saga. Why not just pick the top 7 characters and write about them & then move on? She knew Paris was incredibly popular and pushed his book back so much that when it finally came out, it was not able to live up to expectations. Now we have 3-4 more to go before we get to Torin's book (the last one in the series) and it'll take years since Showalter also has 4-5 other series in the works. (She never finished the Alien Huntress series at all; there are 3-4 dangling threads that'll never get resolved.)

I think the person who handled it the best is Lisa Kleypas. She makes each series a manageable number (about 3-4 books) and she wraps up the storyline in a way that satisfies the reader. Even if characters pop up in each other's series, it's clear that they are not all part of one big series. When she got tired of historical and third person POV, she wrote one trilogy in contemporary romance in first person. When she decided she wanted to tone down on sex scenes and write another contemporary series in third person, she committed to four books and now she's doing that. There is a huge demand from fans for her to go back to her steamy historical, but she's focusing on finishing the series she's on before she goes back to that. I have a huge amount of respect for how she plans out her books because I feel like it's more respectful to the fans. When you sign up for a Kleypas series, I feel like you're getting what she promised out of it. You know she's not going to introduce three extra characters and just drag out the series.

I'm a huge Cole fan and I do think she's managed to keep the quality of her writing high even this far into the IAD series. However, if it takes her another 5 years to finish this series and it's because her creative juices aren't flowing, I think it's on Cole... she's setting it up that way. Fans will not fault her if she just decides to wrap up the series in the next year with Nix's story and then start a whole other series immediately after. In fact, we'd welcome it.

I totally dig what folks are saying but I also think we have been spoiled with Cole's IAD series. We have all known since early in the series that all immortal roads lead to the Ascension. A Spring Cleaning of the immortal world if you will and that has allowed us to feel the entire storyline from book to book wrap us all in a literary hug because we know we are traveling on a road getting to a penultimate.

I found that Jack's character in the Arcana Chronicles did not treat Evie any worse than say Lachlain did to Emmaline in AHLNO. In that book Emma was a 75 year old immortal and this thousand+ immortal subjected her to some very intimate, intrusive and some would say abusive scenarios during their time in the book. The beauty of Cole's world though is that her female portrayals can take it and dish it out in spades and that is what I look forward to the most in the Arcana Chronicles. We see glimpses of it in the last chapter when Evie let's her inner self out to play. Once you read that part then as a reader I know that anything Jack dished out up to that point (which was not that bad IMO was nothing but Evie's training bra for bigger and better things and she will be able to hand ass out to whoever messes with her.

On the subject of teenaged angst. I did not feel the portrayal of teenage life was too angst filled. It was not like reliving high school (which for me rocked) or watching Mean Girls. I thought it was very balanced but I mostly like that there are so many viewpoints from fans on this series. [/color]

Does it bother you more that the ascension is a unfinished storyline or do you feel like you've been hanging on to see a specific character get their story Nix, Furie.. .?

Regarding Poision Princess I agree that Lothaire was a redeemed in his book but Jackson was a jerk pretty much beginning to end with very little to redeem his character but his ability to keep Evie alive. For example this little gem was pretty much then end of Jackson for me:
I rose as well, darting for my soaked jeans, snatching them up my legs with difficulty. “Did you save me just so I’d sleep with you?”
“The idea might’ve crossed my mind! Hell, Evie, you’re probably the last girl on earth for me. Would it kill you to put out?”
He says this about two seconds after almost having sex with her and about two seconds before coming on to the next female he sees. (Turns out Evie is not the last girl on earth for him and he's pretty prompt in letting her know that)
I think that Cole IS planning to redeem him but I also think she need to throw us bone as it regards his character in this book. Without some redeeming moments or qualities in him I'm just not interested. I wouldn't be interested in Evie at all (she's whinny and useless 99% of the book) but she is slightly redeemed or maybe I should say made interesting by the last 1% of the book. (Slight Spoiler below)
The last 1% of the book Jackson spent making out with another chick after professing his love to Evie (maybe) and then (definitely) betraying her after going on and on about how she could trust him with her secret.
utoeid what did you find redeemable about Jackson? (maybe a spoiler) Also (kinda off topic) but what do you think the chances that Jackson is a Tarot and is using the booze to drown out the voices?All that being said Cole is a heck of a storyteller and like I said I enjoyed the premise of the story. Just the characters that sucked. I might be convinced to read the series after it's all out but I'll easily skip the next book especially at that price and I found the characters annoying enough that it's going to take hearing some great reviews of future books.

I have to take back what I said about being annoyed that Cole was getting off track by starting a new series before finishing IAD. I just read Shadow's Claim and loved it. It's all I have done for the last two days because I couldn't stop reading it. The IAD world is very much a part of it and all in a good way. Nix even makes an appearance. It is in no way a stand alone book introducing another world. In fact, if you haven't read the other IAD books you will be lost, but if you have read them and enjoyed them I highly recommend this one.

I read Shadow's Claim this past week, too, and I also thought it was fantastic. It does seem to be a continuation of the IAD series (although it's packaged as part of a trilogy that's set IN the IAD universe).

Isn't it amazing how expectations color how we rate a book! I gave it a B-/C+ in another thread because it was so similar to her other books, and not the departure I thought the Dacian storyline would be. I really didn't get excited about the plot till towards the end and the big misunderstanding.

I guess if I had gone into it realizing this book was really integral to the IAD series and not going in an entirely new direction, I would not have had dashed expectations. The IAD series is one of my favorites, like many people, but I'm ready for the big finale. Is she now going to write about all the cousins, as well as all the remaining main IAD characters before the wrap up? Wow!

I think you're absolutely right - expectations definitely color the enjoyment of a book.

One of the reasons I really enjoyed it was because I just read Ione's latest and I found that book to be terrible. So I think I had low expectations going in (I had mixed feelings towards Lothaire, as well) and that made me pleasantly surprised.

Secondly, I was a huge fan of Sabine in "The Kiss of the Demon King" and a huge fan of Sebastian in his novel (he's my favorite vampire out of all the vampires in the IAD world). This book had characters that were similar to those characters and so I think I was pre-disposed to like it. In some ways, the book was also similar to "A Hunger Like No Other" (Emmaline/Lachlain's story) and I do see the similarities between Emmaline and Bettina. Bettina, like Emmaline, is a half-breed who is rare and is somehow weaker than both of the races she belongs to... both are a little on the weak side and have a lot of fear to overcome.

However, I thought Bettina was better written than Emmaline was and I thought the romance between Trehan and Bettina was a lot more... well... romantic. I could understand how the two fell in love. Bettina was a three-dimensional person, with her own talents and interests. There is a scene in the book where Bettina is working on something and she completely forgets that Trehan is in the room -- I loved that. I sensed that these two respected and genuinely liked each other because they were into similar things and they had mutual hobbies and interests that overlapped.

There is smokin' hot sex, of course, but I thought the sex added to the romance - it didn't replace it. I also thought that Trehan was not a controlling, abusive jerk (unlike Lothaire and few of the Lykae men). He was kind of serious and on the geeky side... I really loved that.

All in all, this one is probably going to end up being one of my favorite IADs.

And - yeah - I'm also completely bemused that she's decided to add 3 books on the Dacians (who are a side-story to the whole IAD business) and then she's got Lanthe, Nix, and Furie to go. We're talking at least 5 more books before we can finally get to the END of the IAD series and figure out what's going on with this Ascension business. There is a part of me that's scared that she doesn't know how to complete the series (and finish the Ascension storyline) and that's why she keeps putting off the ending. I hope she knows what she's doing and I also want her to finish it already. I'm enjoying the books, but I really would like to see the end at some point.

Mek, we had the opposite reaction to Shadow. I loved the first 80% of the book, but found the last 20% flawed with the big misunderstanding. I think Cole mainly used it as a device to bring in Lothaire to do a little marriage counseling. I thought Tre's actions didn't fit into his character after being so intellectual, patient and thoughtful as to how to win the games and Bettina. He sort of becomes a cranky drama queen at the end of the competition instead of doing his usual research. I would have graded the book a solid A if it wasn't for that last conflict, but I dropped it to an A- by the wrap up.

PS- Salem annoyed me a tad a first, but by the end he won me over and I assume he will be a character in the upcoming books. Perhaps that balance puts the book back to A territory for me.